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Etowah County is a county located in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2020 census the population was 103,436. Its county seat is Gadsden. Its name is from a Cherokee word meaning "edible tree". In total area, it is the smallest county in Alabama, but one of the most densely populated. Etowah County comprises the Gadsden Metropolitan Statistical Area.
[edit] History
The area was split first among neighboring counties, with most of it belonging to DeKalb and Cherokee counties.[1] It was separated and established as Baine County on December 7, 1866, by the first postwar legislature, and was named for General David W. Baine of the Confederate Army. The county seat was designated as Gadsden. Because of postwar tensions and actions of insurgents against freedmen, at the state constitutional convention in 1868, the new county was abolished, replaced on December 1, 1868, by one aligned to the same boundaries and named Etowah County, from a Cherokee language word. Most of the Cherokee had been removed in the 1830s to Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma) west of the Mississippi River. [edit] 20th century to presentEtowah County had issues of racial discrimination and injustice, and Jim Crow. It had one documented lynching between 1877 and 1950, which occurred in 1906. Bunk Richardson, an innocent African-American, only because he was associated with a case in which a white woman was raped and killed. The whites were angry that the governor had commuted the death sentence of one defendant in the case (who was likely also innocent of charges), after two men had already been executed for the crime. An F4 tornado struck here on Palm Sunday March 27, 1994. It destroyed Piedmont's Goshen United Methodist Church twelve minutes after the National Weather Service of Birmingham issued a tornado warning for northern Calhoun, southeastern Etowah, and southern Cherokee counties. [edit] Timeline
[edit] Population History
[edit] CemeteriesCemeteries of Etowah County, Alabama, United States [edit] Research Tips
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